For the first time in nearly three decades, the erstwhile allies in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the BJP, contested separately in the civic body polls held Saturday for five municipal corporations and 41 municipal councils and nagar panchayats.
The outcome of these polls indicated that the performances of both the parties were lacklustre. However, the BJP managed to pull off a stronger performance than the Akali Dal, signalling its gradual entry into semi-rural areas of the state.
The SAD, whose vote bank is mainly based in the rural belts, faced a severe setback in these polls. Many of the Akali Dal’s candidates contested as Independents without its poll symbol as they feared a backlash from people in view of the party’s turmoil amid religious punishment awarded to its leadership by the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhs.
The elections to five municipal corporations – in which the ruling AAP and the principal Opposition Congress won one each with the remaining three witnessing hung verdicts – involved 368 wards across Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, and Phagwara. The BJP won 55 of 319 wards it contested (17.2% success rate), while the SAD won just 11 of 213 wards it contested (5.1% success rate).
Of 95 wards in the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation, Punjab’s biggest civic body, the BJP contested 90 wards and won 19. In an embarrassment for the ruling party, the BJP’s Poonam Ratra defeated its candidate Meenu Prashar, wife of local AAP MLA Ashok Prashar Pappi, in ward no. 77 by 574 votes. The SAD could win only 2 after contesting 78 wards.
In Patiala – senior BJP leader and ex-CM Captain Amarinder Singh’s home turf – the BJP contested 25 of 53 wards, winning just 4, despite intense campaigning by Jai Inder Kaur, daughter of Capt Amarinder, who is also the Punjab BJP’s mahila morcha president.
In Jalandhar, the BJP won 19 of 83 wards it contested, as compared to 8 it had won in 2017. The SAD contested 31 wards, but drew a blank.
In Phagwara, the BJP contested 37 of 50 wards, winning 4, while the SAD won 3 of the 9 it contested. In 2015, the SAD-BJP alliance had won 30 seats here (SAD 9, BJP 21).
In the Amritsar civic body polls, the BJP fought 84 of 85 wards, winning 9, while the SAD won 4 of 69 it contested.
Expressing “satisfaction” over the results, state BJP general secretary Anil Sarin said, “In the previous polls too, we were in the Opposition, but we were in alliance with SAD. However our individual performance has improved a lot now… In Lok Sabha, we had performed really well in all the municipal corporations but then people vote differently in Lok Sabha and civic polls.”
Sarin said, “The BJP’s slow penetration into semi-rural areas is evident”.
In Sangrur municipal council, CM Bhagwant Mann’s turf, the BJP won 3 out of 29 wards and lost narrowly in 4 others. In Patiala’s Bhadson Nagar panchayat, the BJP won 2 of 13 seats. Similarly, it secured wins in 2 wards in Raja Sansi (Amritsar) and one each in Bhikhi (Mansa), Shahkot, and Goraya (Jalandhar).
The SAD candidates’ bids to contest largely as Independents in municipal councils and nagar panchayats yielded mixed results. “We had left it to the local leadership to decide. And at many places our candidates contested as Independents but people knew that they are Akalis,” SAD leader Parambans Bunty Rumana told The Indian Express.
While the BJP gained some ground in semi-rural areas, its performance in these civic polls however did not match up to its significant 2024 Lok Sabha poll leads in Ludhiana, Patiala, Jalandhar and Amritsar. The party had drawn a blank in the Lok Sabha polls in the state, though.
The SAD had skipped the recent bypolls in four Assembly seats due to its ex-president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s “Tankhaiya” status. Although he completed his Tankhah (religious punishment) on December 12, Sukhbir did not campaign for the party in the civic polls as the Akal Takht has so far not given its final verdict in his case.
The Akali leaders admitted that their local leaders preferred the “strategy” of contesting without the party’s symbol in many wards to “avoid backlash” which, they claimed, resulted in its “scattered wins”.
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